This section contains information that needs to be cleaned up. Reason: The death knight realm has already been confirmed to be the Shadowlands. Sylvanas committing suicide from ICC in EoN has already been connected to the Shadowlands. Reword still unclear things, move confirmed things to the main section of the page or remove them entirely if they are already incorporated there.
The Shadowlands will feature five major zones - Bastion, Ardenweald, Revendreth, Maldraxxus, and the Maw. In the center will be the city of Oribos, which functions as the main player hub similar to Shattrath City in Outland in The Burning Crusade or Dalaran in Wrath of the Lich King and Legion. There will be four new dungeons for leveling, four more at maximum level, and a new raid. In addition, a new roguelike "endless dungeon" called Torghast, Tower of the Damned, will be introduced for both solo and group play.[5][7]
Beings of death are ancient and powerful, and it is dangerous to meddle in their realm. When Odyn peered into the Shadowlands, he saw some of its inhabitants: souls in torment, the husks of the dead, ghostly wraiths with no face, and others with no form, all made of death itself. This was enough to frighten even him.[41] Several races in the Shadowlands, such as the kyrian of Bastion, are souls of deceased mortals who have been transformed to serve a new purpose. If one of these former mortals is killed in the Shadowlands, they die permanently. Other creatures—such as dredgers and stewards—are endemic to the Shadowlands and are naturally born from the magic of death to serve the different realms and help facilitate the process of the afterlife. If one such creature of death is killed, their energy is recycled back into the Shadowlands, and eventually another member of the same race will manifest to take the place of the one that was killed.[42][43]
These abilities, along with the new placement call outs in the data, suggest some aspect of the mission table will involve this new autobattle mode. However, we’ve yet to see any screenshots or how it manifests in-game. It’s possible this could be a scrapped idea left in the code and datamined by accident — something game director Ion Hazzikostas warned players about last week.
Adventurers entering the Shadowlands will find the realm of the dead in disarray. In the natural order of things, souls are sorted and sent on to an afterlife realm appropriate to the lives they lived,[5] but starting around the time of the Burning Legion's third invasion of Azeroth,[20] all souls who have perished—including the innocents slain at Teldrassil—are being funneled directly into the Maw. The Shadowlands are starving for anima even as the Maw continues to grow from the glut of fresh souls. Sylvanas Windrunner has been seemingly perpetrating acts to bring about great amounts of death and destruction. In partnership with the Jailer, they have been working toward a common end for some time.[5]